The three of them staggered into the classroom just before the bell.
“I swear those staircases are doing it on purpose,” Ron muttered, rubbing his still-red nose as he claimed a seat.
The empty desk at the front made him sag with relief.
“At least the professor isn’t here yet.” Harry shot Ivan a grateful look.
Getting up early had saved them.
“She’s already here,” Ivan said quietly.
He glanced once at the tabby cat sitting on the teacher’s desk, then walked straight to his seat.
Harry and Ron stared at him in confusion—until the cat leapt down, twisted mid-air, and landed as Professor McGonagall.
Both boys’ mouths fell open.
McGonagall herself looked mildly surprised.
She had intended the Animagus form as both observation and opening demonstration.
Being spotted by a first-year was unexpected.
She gave Ivan a brief, approving nod and began the lesson.
“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” she said.
“Anyone who misbehaves in my class will leave and not come back.” With a flick of her wand the desk in front of her became a living pig, then snapped back into wood.
The class gasped.
Ivan watched every stage of the change from the front row.
Precise.
Fast.
Flawless.
Turning a wooden desk into a conscious animal was not simple shape-shifting; it rewrote the structure of matter and briefly gave a dead object a mind.
The depth of wizarding magic showed itself clearly in that single demonstration.
Interest in the room spiked.
After explaining the theory and wand movement, McGonagall handed out matches.
The goal: turn a match into a silver needle.
As she spoke, a soft chime sounded in Ivan’s mind.
[Ding.
You listened carefully to the professor’s explanation.
Though the content is somewhat difficult, proficiency in the Transfiguration Charm has increased slightly.] He opened the panel.
A new line had appeared under Magic: [Transfiguration Charm – Level 0 (6/100)] Exactly as he had hoped.
Any spell could be improved through practice.
He spent the next half of the class repeating the motion, only to discover it was not that simple.
“Mr.
Hals!” McGonagall’s sharp voice cut across the room.
Every head turned.
“I believe I already warned you that spell-casting is dangerous.
Focus is required before you release any magic.
Mechanical repetition will not help you.
Concentrate.
Visualize the needle.” “Yes, Professor.” Ivan nodded politely, forced his mind clear, and moved the nearly twelve-inch wand in the proper pattern.
The match on the dark desk twisted under an invisible force, slowly stretching toward a needle’s shape—then collapsed back into a match as if something had interfered.
McGonagall merely nodded, told him to keep practicing, and moved on.
Most first-years were at the same level.
Ivan exhaled under his breath.
“Proficiency doesn’t climb as easily as I thought.” After the early surge, gains slowed dramatically.
Not every attempt even registered.
It felt less like grinding a skill and more like the system simply displaying the level he already possessed.
By the end of the period he still could not hold a stable transformation for more than a second or two.
A finger jabbed his shoulder.
Harry was practically vibrating, pointing at the half-formed, faintly gleaming object on his own desk.
“Ivan, look!
I did it!” “Yeah.
You did.
That’s good work.
You’ve got talent.” First Transfiguration class and Harry had already produced a lasting change.
That put him well above average—certainly above Ivan.
Harry launched into a rapid explanation of how, before Hogwarts, he had half-believed he might not be able to do magic at all.
The sudden weight of being the Boy-Who-Lived had left him terrified of failing in front of everyone.
Ivan was not surprised.
The Sorting Hat had already called Harry brave, kind, and highly gifted.
It had even tried to put him in Slytherin.
In third year the same boy would cast a Patronus strong enough to drive off a hundred Dementors after barely learning the spell.
Left to Hogwarts’ rather free-form education, Harry would still reach professor-level strength before graduation.
Ivan told himself he was not jealous.
Not even a little.
Most of the class was performing at roughly his own mediocre level.
That was some comfort—until McGonagall’s voice rang out again.
“Excellent, Miss Granger!
Everyone, look.
Miss Granger has successfully turned her match into a needle.
Five points to Gryffindor!” A few desks away, Hermione Granger sat with her bushy brown hair falling around her shoulders, chin lifted in quiet pride while the rest of the first-years stared.
Ivan’s carefully rebuilt composure shattered.
Is this even letting ordinary wizards live?
“Bloody hell, I was so close,” Ron muttered, jabbing his wand at the table.
“If I’d practiced a bit longer she would’ve praised me instead.” Ivan glanced at the match that had already reverted on Ron’s desk and privately doubted Ron would reach Hermione’s level in the next several lessons.
He was not doing much better himself—possibly worse.
So much for the usual transmigration package of talent boosts and soul-fusion mental strength.
None of it had appeared.
The Sorting Hat’s blunt assessment of his ability now felt painfully accurate.
The unstable Transfiguration was not only a talent problem.
The low wand compatibility—72.5 percent—was clearly sabotaging him.
If magic was electricity and the wand was the wiring, every spell was an appliance running on a faulty circuit.
Lights flickered.
Sometimes they shorted out completely.
He would be stuck with this wand for at least a term.
After more fruitless struggling he discovered one accidental trick: forcing unordered magic through the wand produced a thin beam that instantly reverted any unstable transformation.
Useful only for undoing his own failures or, occasionally, sabotaging Ron’s attempts.
Nothing more.
When McGonagall dismissed the class another chime sounded.
[Ding.
Through the host’s persistent effort, Transfiguration class has concluded.
Keep working hard.
Overall class evaluation: Average Evaluator: Minerva McGonagall Reward: Academic Points ×5] Class evaluations could grant points.
Ivan had not expected that.
The system was treating school like university all over again.
He suspected end-of-term exams would carry rewards or penalties as well.
Still, a new function was welcome.
He located the newly unlocked exchange tab.
The only item available was a single Top Student Experience Card.
Cost: 100 Academic Points.
Effect: one hour of greatly increased learning efficiency.
No forbidden curses.
No combat magic.
Just a temporary study boost.
The system wanted him to learn the hard way.
At five points per class and three to five classes a day, a single one-hour card would take five full days of perfect evaluations.
The exchange rate was criminal.
One hour was barely enough to learn anything substantial.
He had no other options for improving his efficiency.
Study hard, then.
History of Magic followed—dry, endless, and delivered by the ghostly Professor Binns, who neither noticed nor cared about the living students in front of him.
Ivan had no chance to raise the evaluation.
Another Average rating.
Another five points.
Charms class revealed the real problem.
The lesson focused on applying magic smoothly to an object, the foundation for the Levitation Charm.
Because of the wand’s interference Ivan spent the entire period barely succeeding, and only after exploding the practice object three times.
His result was only marginally better than Neville’s.
Hermione succeeded on her third attempt.
The evaluation came back Poor.
Only two Academic Points.
The single bright spot was the ongoing Explore Hogwarts quest.
After several days of deliberate wandering the progress bar had reached 30 percent.
Each percentage point rewarded two Academic Points, for a total of sixty.
Far faster than classroom gains.
For the first time the 100-point Top Student card looked achievable.